Reading Adam Smith Right

ADAM SMITH was an interesting fellow. Multifaceted, he was an accomplished moral philosopher, political scientist, and economic analyst and historian, who is generally given credit for being the first person the describe in detail in way in which modern capitalism functions, in his book "The Wealth of Nations", widely regarded as one of the most important and influential books of all time. The "Bible of Capitalism" is often seen as explaining capitalism with such clarity that it not only explains the free market economic system, but provides an unassailable argument in favor of it. This, however, is not altogether true. Smith, in fact, never uses the word "capitalism" in the book, and never uses the term "laissez faire", "leave alone', the term often associated with a lack of government intervention in the free market. He does extol the virtues of the "invisible hand" of the law of supply and demand, but uses those principles in ways not widely known today. Smith does not give his approval to people using their abilities to seek great personal wealth, and in fact expressed his view that economic inequality was harmful to general national prosperity. He believed that when the free market is allowed to operate unhindered by government regulation, it would naturally produce widespread economic equality, and that this was a desirable end. He not only believed in equality of opportunity, but also equality of outcome, a fact not well known today. He said that all government action on behalf of the poor is desirable, but that government action on behalf of the wealthy was never desirable. Today's exponents of capitalism use Smith as an example of logical justification of a wealthy class and persistent economic inequality, but smith in fact believed that a nation, any nation, was far poorer the greater the gap between the rich and the poor. In today's terms, Smith can be seen almost as much as a socialist as a capitalist, a theorist who believed that government intervention was undesirable, until it became necessary to remedy great social ills, such as impoverishment of the working class, or glaring inequality. And, today's socialists do not prefer government run economics for its own sake, but rather, like Adam Smith, for the purpose of making society more equal, compassionate, and stable.